Hence the rapid development of prosperity in these regions and their powerful commercial position; whereas Latium remained preeminently an agricultural country.

The same contrast recurs in all their individual relations.

The oldest tombs constructed and furnished in the Greek fashion, but with an extravagance to which the Greeks were strangers, are to be found at Caere, while--with the exception of Praeneste, which appears to have occupied a peculiar position and to have been very intimately connected with Falerii and southern Etruria--the Latin land exhibits only slight ornaments for the dead of foreign origin, and not a single tomb of luxury proper belonging to the earlier times; there as among the Sabellians a simple turf ordinarily sufficed as a covering for the dead.

The most ancient coins, of a time not much later than those of Magna Graecia, belong to Etruria, and to Populonia in particular: during the whole regal period Latium had to be content with copper by weight, and had not even introduced foreign coins, for the instances are extremely rare in which such coins (e.g.

one of Posidonia) have been found there.